West Orange relief high-school site rejected; school district may sue

School leaders consider legal challenge

Opponents and proponents pack the room during a hearing in the… (Stephen M. Dowell, Orlando…)

November 5, 2013|By David Damron, Orlando Sentinel

Orange County commissioners dealt a major setback to school leaders Tuesday nightin a showdown over where to build a new high school to relieve crowding problems in west Orange County.

After a contentious six-hour debate involving dozens of residents, commissioners voted 6-1 to reject the school district's plan to build the campus on a 66-acre parcel on County Road 535.

Orange School Board Chairman Bill Sublette suggested that the fight is not over. Legal action is possible.

"Every day of delay is a disservice to the residents and schoolchildren of west Orange County," Sublette said. "We're going to sit down and analyze our legal position.

"We think we have a solid legal position."

A crowd of more than 100 homeowners, parents and students took part in the debate, with school-site foes clad in red, and most of the parents seeking approval of the proposed parcel wearing Orange ribbons.

Commissioner Scott Boyd, who represents the area, sided with those who said the noise, traffic and lights that a new 2,850-student campus could bring would be a bad fit for the West Windermere Rural Settlement, an area protected from more intense development.

"It is not compatible with the surrounding development," Boyd said of the proposed school site.

Commissioner Ted Edwards agreed with school leaders, who said the area was not truly rural, and the four-lane road that would lead into the high-school campus was a good place to accommodate students in the growing area.

The rejection could delay the opening of a new relief high school, which the Orange school planners hoped would open by late 2017.

School Board attorney Woody Rodriguez said one of the next steps would be to evaluate the less-desirable alternative sites it already has passed over. Another option would be to weigh whether a judge might overrule the County Commission's decision.

The school district has 30 days to decide whether to challenge Tuesday night's decision in court.

The best option, Sublette said, was rejected by county commissioners.

Sitting on a four-lane byway, and with a newer shopping plaza and Windermere Preparatory School already approved nearby, the relief-school campus would fit right in with its "modern, upscale, suburban" neighbors, school officials said.

Many parents said they feared the board's rejection would stymie the class choices their students would have in their upcoming high-school years. And not everyone could afford to go to the nearby prep school.

"People who have money don't want this school in their backyard," said Marlene Kirtland, a mother of four, two of whom attend nearby Bridgewater Middle School. "Our children are being forced to go to crowded schools."

West Orange High School, several miles north, is about 500 students over capacity and expects to gain an additional 800 or so students in the next five years, school officials said. The area around the school site is booming with construction, and signs dot the surrounding roads, promising more development — and students — are on the way.

However, residents next door in the Oxford Moor community would have had to trade a grassy citrus grove for ball fields and buildings if the new school were built there on land known as the Beck property. They feared the dawn-to-dusk activity on a high-school campus would bring too much noise and traffic to the community.

Opponents who banded together as Citizens United for Sensible Growth said there were better places to build a "mega high school." They questioned whether the C.R. 535 site met the county's growth rules and said school officials had waited too long to pursue it, using the crowded-schools plea as leverage to push a bad site.

It's "almost forcing the county to put something there that doesn't belong," said Karen Consalo, the group's lawyer.

The fight mirrored other battles that have pitted a growing school district against more rural homeowners. In 2008, the County Commission rejected a controversial school-district plan to rebuild Evans High next to a rural zone near Ocoee.

For most commissioners, a key concern was that if they allowed this school site inside a rural settlement, the other 21 protected rurally designated communities in Orange would be next.

"[If] we say yes to this," Brummer said, "the School Board is coming after those other rural settlements."